With Autism Acceptance Month in mind and my previous post on 'Employable Me' featuring topics around autism, I came across these beautiful videos from Apple reminding us "how important it is to ensure everyone with a voice can be heard".

It is amazing to see devices helping individuals communicate. More importantly how simple the process is.

With many advances on apps for health it is clearly a trend in the healthcare market and a future for the medical device industry.

As Emily Willingham says "the cost of an iPad, for example, is a fraction of what the cluncky visual-keyboard-based "talkers" cost, not to mention far more accessible for many people than battling, over and over again, with the insurance company to even acquire a "talker"".

If these videos provide nothing else, they give a beautiful insight into a world many of us would have never have seen, let alone understood. Both videos, but particularly Dillan's Path, brought a very large tear to my eye and for me, anything that thought provoking about our world is worth sharing.

Although probably impossibly difficult to predict, I know I'm excited about what the future holds for devices in healthcare; What do you think should be next for the tech health care giants such as Apple?

Dillan's Voice can be viewed at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMN2PeFama0

Dillan's Path can be viewed at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTx12y42Xv4&nohtml5=False

{

Two-minute segment depicts Dillan, an autistic teen, using his iPad (natch) to communicate (with what some online commenters have suggested is facilitated communication; more on that here). The video quotes him as saying:
"All my life, I wanted so badly to connect with people but they couldn’t understand because I had no way to communicate."
Of course, the communication tool being highlighted is the iPad. That might seem like craven pandering to sell a product (disclosure: I have family members who work for Apple), but the fact is that the benefits of the iPad for autistic people are immeasurable. The cost of an iPad, for example, is a fraction of what the clunky visual-keyboard-based “talkers” cost, not to mention far more accessible for many people than battling, over and over again, with the insurance company to even acquire a “talker.”